My Mum is only 69, but has Parkinsons and normal pressure hydrocephalus, both of which contribute to her almost complete lack of mobility. To 'get her in the system' to get some help at home we had to contact Social Services ourselves. My Dad died in February (cancer) and in the couple of months before his final admission to hospice he had morning carers to help him get washed and dressed. When he was admitted to the hospice (and we knew it was for the last time, and wouldn't be a long stay), the carers told Mum to contact her GP for referral to get carers herself, so Mum duly called the GP .... who told her 'she has a daughter' so didn't need carers!!!! I called Social Services myself (4 times in the end, the second, third and fourth calls emphasising that Mum had fallen and needed hospital treatment twice sinve my first call to them - all 3 times they said Mum was 'urgent' for assessment!) and she was finally assessed for care in APRIL. She now has a carer every morning. Most mornings, they simply do jobs like changing the bed sheet and putting out the rubbish, but some mornings she needs more help.
Mum can go from expressing a wish to go in a home to telling me she wants to stop the carers (NOT happening!!) in the space of one sentence! A locum GP (called by the carer one morning when she was concerned about Mum's level of confusion) referred her to the elderly psychiatry team - a community mental health nurse came to Mum's bunglalow and assessed her. She has no signs of dementia of any kind - apparantly her confusion, forgetfulness and inability to understand more than one thing at once is down to her grief for Dad and for the life she had until about October last year (that's when her mobility started to really fail).
Mum either cannot or will not grasp that she is not going to wake up one morning and be able to walk again - she is constantly telling me what she will do when she can move again, when she can get out again, etc. it breaks my heart as I know it's simply not going to happen. She was always so active and full of life and to see her struggling to do the simplest of jobs and just whiling away her days watching antiques shows on TV is soul-destroying. We tried taking her to our static caravan for the weekend and that was a disaster, so basically she is effectively stuck where she is for the rest of her life (other than the odd trip out, which has to be planned with military precision, and which she enjoys once they happen but makes a big fuss about how hard it is in the days before, and there is no way you can surprise her with an outing - she just wouldn't go!).
I know, in the big scheme of things, I'm lucky with Mum - she makes no demands on me and, with the help of the carers (and the knowledge she has a little thing round her wrist that will call the emergency services if she falls - clever!), she is relatively independant. But sometimes I despair at the state she's in, I miss the Mum I have lost hugely, and it breaks my heart when she tells me she's just in the way and would be better off dead
Sorry - once I start venting all this I can't stop
Hubby does his best, but he's never been the best at emotional things (he's GREAT with practical problems!), and I do my best not to moan to my friends - I'm fed up with myself for moaning, so goodness knows how they feel! At least you girls can just stop reading when you've had enough!! Thanks for listening x
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Topic: For all of us looking after elderly relatives (Read 250668 times)